2021 SF, second in a five-book series. A gold rush is coming, and the
power blocs are interested.
And to summarise the plot I'd say "it's a bit more complicated
than that". The battlecruiser captain thought he'd been sent out here
to the border for embarrassing the prince, and he had, but also there
are people who specifically want him there to keep a lid on what may
be coming. There's a minor noble who's turned up to buy the border
station's scrapyard and just happens to employ a lot of "recently
retired" Marines… and in many books that would be an unalloyed good
thing, rah rah we've got an undocumented force on site to Do Good
with. But there are questions about just who is pulling her strings,
and what they want; and of course the royal families that control
the reality-breaking weapons aren't monolithic either.
And Nora really doesn't want to get involved in any of that, but she
isn't going to have a choice. The child she adopted is thought to know
the location of a space oil deposit, and to keep her safe she has to
"find" a deposit herself and pass it off as the same one. Which is
going to make her tremendously rich.
And where a more conventional author would have a casual romance, that
doesn't fit Nora; she has to be able to share those secrets. So what
might have been a second meeting and some casual smooching turns into
a confessional. It's all the more powerful for not following the
standard track of this sort of story.
I mean, it's still not great writing, and if you haven't got on
with earlier books I'm not suggesting that this will change your mind.
But I'm getting styles of thought from Schwartz which I don't meet as
often as I'd like.